Intergalactic Summit

Depends. Does your idea of recent events end at the Liberation of Home, or do you actually mean recent events? Do I need to point out on whose initiative the recent peace agreement regarding Home was brokered? That's right, Mens Reppola, one of the CEOs of the okusaiken. The State may thrive on War, I agree there, but we thrive equally on Peace.

If anything, with the removal of Heth, the State is the party in this relationship that is preparing for peace - you're the ones still being lead by warmongers, carrying out illegal spying and espionage (and getting caught doing it, moreover!) and so on.

Do you need a reminder of the definition of 'Home World'? Caldari Prime is, and always will be, part of our 'little corner of space'. I'll remind you that no attempt was made to retain control of so much as a moonlet that wasn't ours to recover.

Also, you'll recollect that I highlighted not just the fact that they're doing it, but the fact that they're getting caught? Isn't it standard practice to chide those who get caught breaking the law? And why stick those little airquotes around "spies" like that? Are you claiming they weren't spies?

It's that scowl, if you smiled more people would like you more..... Also maby lay off the slave thing a bit, people tend to tune you out when you bring it up in every thread.

And here we go yet again.

Liberation, what a word for a war crime.

I am starting to agree with Msr. Sarice, may God help us all.

Warmongers, to whom are you referring? President Roden?

Please list his crimes for me.

As to espionage, games within games my friend.

But I suppose it all depends on whose watching who and what their doing when they get caught. Both watcher and watched.

Thank you for your wise council. It is always important to remember that hard truths often sound the same as belligerent aggression. It's something that I always try to keep in mind, and I hope that you do, too.

I think there is some merit in trying to put all of this in context. I would say the Caldari certainly deserved their home planet to be under their control, but I couldn't agree that Heth's surprise invasion of demarcated Gallente space was a constructive way to do it. Your children's children will be blamed for the warfare the invasions started, and you'll have to accept that it was the fault of those who were involved at the time, even if you weren't there and wouldn't have agreed with it in the first place.

On the other hand, I suppose the reason to weigh in on this is that we have a tendency to blame the empires for the crimes of people, when it's become fairly obvious that imperial governments and bureaucracies are so vast, even in tightly-pyramidal Amarr space, we have a lot of small factions that can act independently. Whatever you think of the invasion and the war it touched off, there's not really a way you can call all Caldari responsible. It was Heth's nationalist gambit, one that paid short term political dividends at the expense of long-term relations. He thought it was worth it, later Caldari might have thought it could be achieved through other means. But as soon as Heth began the invasion, it was too late for the Caldari State to do anything about it but accept whatever rewards it got from the mess and prepare to cash the check Heth had written. No refunds or renegotiation allowed.

The new political solution on the planet, I think, satisfies no one but is an attempt to at least bring some semblance of calm to the situation. I give praise to those involved in it; it would be easier politically to simply turn the planet's surrounding system into a warzone. I can only hope the Intaki homeworld someday receives that same courtesy. By that same token, it's probably not good to ignore Federal clandestine operations when they're discovered, as they do break intersteller law, even when we simply assume those laws are constantly broken. At the same time, it's hard to see where that fits into the discussion. Less people knew about these operations than the Caldari Prime invasion and they certainly weren't responsible for the current warfare.

Unfortunately, the over-generalized and racist argument method is deeply ingrained in our cultures, and imperial pride makes us absolutely unable to publicly say we disagree with the way things are handled. In the end, we, as capsuleers and citizens, are paying for decisions made by governments and factions of our people we have no control over. Unfortunately, few of the Caldari being killed in the warfare today were anywhere near Caldari Prime during the invasion and even fewer Gallente were the spies in Caldari space. Yet they'll be used as a justification for further bloodshed for years, each generation's stories fueling the hate of the next until we again forget what we're all fighting about.

It's a complicated feeling of distaste that comes with that statement. To understand why someone would want to kill you just because of to whom and under what circumstances you were born and raised even though you were not there to offend them and, in many cases, they were not around to be offended. It feels inherently ignorant, so I try not to get involved in similar attacks these days. It was a weakness of mine when I first arrived here, I'll admit. You simply can't hold someone's race against them or ask them to answer for the actions of a whole empire. We've all reaped the benefits of violence over the generations and we may not be able to solve our problems with land and money, but we should be cognizant of the sins of our fellows. We gain no wisdom through justifying them, even if we've benefited from them.

All I can say is that while the present conflict may have been conflated by Heth's Caldari actors and the CEWPA conflict can be traced directly back to their invasion, they aren't the ones fighting and dying in the CEWPA warzone. Heth is long gone and many of his followers died at Caldari hands, not Gallente. Like everyone else in those warzones, those fighting there are defending their homes from a belligerent enemy and also providing that enemy for their counterparts. Most I've met are truly good people fighting other good people for no reason other than they can't really stop the momentum by themselves. They didn't start it, they don't have the power to finish it, so all they can do is die in the meantime and point to historical events to try to prove they are not dying in vain.

We should all be careful not to fall into the same rut we wish to fill my friend.

Our individual perspectives on certain events will always place us at odds, and there will be little use in hanging ourselves on the semantics in which we chose to describe them. To the Caldari, the second Battle of Caldari Prime will always be seen as a liberation. No matter of debate regarding how many generations the planet has been apart of the Federation, how it may be perceived by some that our ancestors had abandoned the planet, or how many of its denizens no longer yearn to be apart of the State in which it birthed will change this. These will always remain constants in the minds of our people, its as much apart of who we are as the ideals of Democracy and self-determination are to your people.

Just as we view our return to the homeworld as a liberation there will be no changing the ideas held by so many in the Federation that it was a travesty of war. A crime repaid with a crime or an injustice met with more injustice. Acceptance of these truths, from both sides of the line, is the only thing that can save us from this repetitive madness of eternal ideological tug of war in which we seem to engage so restlessly in.

So much like the night and the day we must learn to coexist as natural opposites, to find an equilibrium in which our two worlds equal out the balance of power in a galaxy that is increasingly getting smaller and smaller by the day.

It has to start somewhere, so why not here?

If I may speak so boldly, when one has suffered a deep....personal....loss, Tuulinen-haan, it tends to sour ones opinions and rot the fruit that would have otherwise bore fresh upon the tree of understanding.

I think our people should understand that better than most.

Even though I was born far from the State, and even further from the Homeworld, my father taught me of the grievous collective wound that we as Caldari shared. I may as well have been born with it, as I know you were. When I finally stepped foot on that hollowed ground that was Caldari Prime it was like a homecoming, a sense of completion of the soul to have stood where my ancestors stood, to breath the air they breathed, and from there I could see the travesties all around me that had once been so easily obscured by once gaping wound of the soul.

Can any of us say with good conscious that in seeking justice for that loss that our vision hasn't been obstructed? that our views not been distorted from seeing things for what they are rather than how we wished to see them? Perhaps after answering that question, we can begin to see past our own political allegiances.

I imagine its not so different from what the Scriptures tell your people, Father Baracca.

When God told the Amarr to set out and claim the stars as their own, they sought out to do so. From the beginning the Amarrian people have been told that the Universe was theirs to claim by Faith, and that legacy was passed on from generation to generation through the teachings of the Scripture. Your father was taught this, and his father before him, and his before him and so on, correct?

When you are told something is yours by right, that you are not only honoring your ancestors but avenging an injustice done to your race and liberating your kin, you tend to forgo what is considered pragmatic. It is the reason that even after Heth the State continues to sink resources into the Homeworld, despite the lack of economic sustainability in doing so.

Its a machination of own doing. It is 'religious' to us because to many the State is God, and the State demanded our return. This was true the moment the last ship fled from Home, and from then on our Ancestors too demanded it, and little can be as more important to a Caldari than honoring those who came before.

Father. I'd like to try to answer your question as best as I'm able.

We are daily reminded of our homeworld. Our staple foods are those which grow only in the warmer seasons, though we could grow whatever we liked, now. Our drinks taste of pine nuts and cracked oats and winter apples. Our homes are kept colder than most other peoples, though we could have them as warm as we liked. Our clothing is simple and hard-working, suited for rough weather, though we could wear whatever we wished now. Our art shows the mountains and oceans and cliffs we once traveled, and our stories (now daytime dramas and evening thrillers) are of hard-working traders and the struggle to survive within a harsh, but beautiful world. Our currencies tell the story of splintered warehouse fortresses spread across the hinterlands, our industry tells the story of a world that was negotiated, never tamed. Even our language reminds us, in the regimented politeness required during prolonged sequestration, and the careful reverence in our idioms.

Caldari is the home of our ancestors and the forge of our people. The winds and spirits of the Caldari Way are in that place, and it will take more than a century of separation to change that.